Arsène Wenger yesterday warned Chelsea that they should have tried to resolve the escalating Mark Clattenburg affair in private before taking their allegations of racism to the Football Association.

At his weekly press conference, the Arsenal manager responded to
questions about the race row that has unfolded over the last week
by suggesting that Chelsea had advanced quickly to a stage where
there was now an FA and Metropolitan police investigation into
Clattenburg with "little proof".

His comments came as the FA's governance department prepares to
get into the serious work of deciding whether there is sufficient
evidence to produce a charge against Clattenburg. The police are
making their own inquiries in partnership with the governing
body.

The police have also been called in by Chelsea to consider
photographs taken during Wednesday's 5-4 League Cup win over
Manchester United in which a home fan in Stamford Bridge's Matthew
Harding Stand appears to be making monkey gestures at Danny
Welbeck.

Wenger said yesterday that it was his policy to try to resolve
disputes with a referee in the aftermath of the game. He said: "I
prefer, when I didn't behave well, to have an explanation
[discussion] with the referee at the end of the game, or on another
day, rather than going public with little proof. I'm not a great
believer in making these stories public.

"My deep feeling is that I was not always behaving very well in
this situation, because they are very heated situations. But I am a
deep supporter of doing that internally."

"For example, the last two nights [in the League Cup] were great
adverts for football and that is absolutely fantastic. For the
rest, I believe that one of the great things in sport is that when
the battle is on, especially in England, you can sort out the
problems you have internally.

"If it becomes a sport to make the lawyers rich then I am not a
fan of it. One of the great things in sport as well is tolerance,
forgiveness and explanation internally, and I think it should stay
like that. It can happen that a referee doesn't behave well, I do
not say they are angels, but it is always better to sort it out in
the room."

His remarks came the day after Chelsea filed an official
complaint that Clattenburg used "inappropriate language" – in this
case a racist slur – towards John Obi Mikel during the Premier
League game against United on Sunday. The FA governance department,
under the leadership of Darren Bailey, is now in a position to
gather evidence from Mikel and other Chelsea players.

Chelsea are hopeful of tracking down the supporter who made the
gesture towards Welbeck – and was caught by a photographer – via
the stadium's CCTV and their own records of ticket sales for the
part of the stand he was sitting in. The club operates a tiered
membership policy and Wednesday's game was not on general sale to
the public so the club are confident of finding out, at the very
least, to whom the offending fan's ticket was sold.

Chelsea are also studying footage from within the stadium to try
to identify the Manchester United supporter who ran on to the pitch
and managed to get back into the stand before the stewards could
catch him. They are also investigating the use of smoke flares by
the United fans.